In 2006, I first met Pastor Cathy Abbott and Arlington Temple United Methodist Church, located in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, just across the Potomac River from Washington DC and the spires of Georgetown University.
Arlington Temple’s building (circa 1971) is a combination gas station-church-community center, with the idea (bizarre and perhaps enlightened) that the gas station would provide stable income for a church located in what could arguably be the most transient zip code in America. Many of the surrounding apartments are rented by the week by folks coming to DC to train for a short stint with the Pentagon or the State Department. Nine weeks to nine months is a typical tenure for local residents. Thus, every time I show up at Arlington Temple on Sunday, it seems there is a new crowd from last time. On a holiday weekend, a third of the folks may be DC tourists, there only for that particular week.
Across the years, this transiency has become an enormous challenge for Arlington Temple. Easily, they must replace two thirds of their active participants every year just to hold even. In addition to the transiency, they are challenged by multiple languages spoken in area homes and a high percentage of the population with graduate degrees (which correlates with diminished church participation all over America). Add in a church split, in which two thirds of the church left with a popular associate pastor a few years back, and you have the recipe for a church that should have died by now.
When I first met this vivacious congregation, they had about 30 folks gathered each Sunday with a ceiling literally falling in on them. Four years later, they have steadily grown: which after you factor in the high turn-over, nets them about 50 or more people gathered most Sundays. Their interior space is largely remodeled, and now they are tackling the exterior - an exceedingly 60’s exterior atop a gas station - not exactly the most inviting image for a church. They sponsor a weekly ministry to the Arlington homeless population and their worship music on Sundays demonstrates the quality and strength you would expect from a church five to ten times their size. They partner with the Art Institute of Washington (next door) who regularly uses their space for student gatherings. Graphic art students from the Art Institute recently designed the church’s new external banners as a class project. On Friday afternoons, Arlington Temple even extends hospitality to a group of Muslim men who work in Rosslyn, offering space for Friday prayers on thirty little rugs in the Fellowship Hall.
Like so many pastors of small congregations, Cathy’s first ministry stint was in a larger church, in fact the largest church of her denomination in Virginia. Excellent, near-mega churches can be great training grounds for pastoral ministry, but they can also teach some lessons that have to be un-learned in a place like Rosslyn. For Cathy’s first two years at Arlington Temple, she was constantly trying what had worked in the suburbs, with ongoing frustration. Finally, she (and the church) began to accept that it was almost an apples and oranges thing, trying to apply suburban growth techniques to a central city congregation. Cathy credits Bishop Bob Schnase’s book “Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations” for helping she and her leader team to move beyond constantly kicking themselves for what they were not, and to begin living well into what they are: an extraordinary small church. From the point that they accepted themselves for their unique community context and their distinctive set of gifts and opportunities, Arlington Temple begin to grow.
Nobody knows what the future will hold, except God. It is a good bet that Arlington Temple will never become a large congregation. However, they are becoming a steadily stronger congregation each year, and small advances do add up over time.
Musical giftedness, interest in the arts, small groups that help people think deeply, multi-cultural mixing, and a passion for caring for homeless folks: these are the areas in which this church excels. They also realize that with such a transient population, there is a high need for a good Sunday morning fellowship hour after worship and for doing small church well. While calling out prayer requests in worship is the last thing a church of 150 should be doing, it is a great idea in this church, where they will have to work hard this next year just to stay a church of 50-60. The faster that they can help new-comers gain a sense of community and belonging, the better.
For two years, I tried to plant a new congregation alongside the Arlington Temple congregation, sharing their facility. What we planted ultimately involved a couple dozen people, and finally the neighborhood just kicked our backsides. We shifted the focus of our efforts across the river into DC and have found better success in church planting in the Dupont neighborhood. When we left Rosslyn, I wondered if the established church - the church that we had hoped to revitalize by our planting effort - I wondered if they would survive the impersonal Rosslyn social terrain of concrete and strangers for much longer into the 21st century. Now, it is becoming clear: not only are they surviving it, they are thriving in it. Thriving because they accept who they are as a vibrant small church in a ridiculously diverse community - and they decided to stop kicking themselves and to start reveling in what they are - and to be the very best small church that they could be.
For more information about this very special faith community, I refer you to www.arlingtontepleumc.org.
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